Great minds like a think: Paul Gottfried on why Mitt Romney's a liberal

Mitt Romney: Liberal or conservative? it depends what day you ask.AP Photo/Evan Vucci

For some time now I've been pointing out the inconvenient fact that Mitt Romney has been on both sides of every issue that has come up in this presidential campaign.

That began of course with the primaries in which he played the part of the big-spending, big government liberal in contrast to Ron Paul's stance as a small-government budget-slasher.

Now he's trying to portray himself as a small-government guy, sort of a Ron Paul light.

Over at the Lew Rockwell blog we hear from Paul Gottfried on the nature of the problem: Romney is a liberal at heart.

Gottfried analyzes the way in which all of the supposedly conservative talking heads at places like Fox News have ignored Romney's liberalism. I particularly liked this passage summing it up:

One knows more or less what four more years of Obama will bring, but Romney seems harder to figure out. He looks nice enough and does have a photogenic family. He probably would manage the economy a bit better than the present administration and would please the Right and center by probably appointing (but who knows!) less left-leaning judges to the federal courts than those favored by the Democrats. But this guy changes his positions the way Beyoncé switches her hair styles. Even worse, his supporters have been so conditioned to hate Obama that they don’t even notice.

Romney's wishy-washy nature may keep us from ever finding out what sort of president he'd make.

Barack Obama is the most beatable incumbent in recent history, yet Romney remains in danger of losing to him.

Tonight's foreign-policy debate will be crucial.

Expect Romney to once again be on both sides of the issue. I expect him to rail against Al Qaeda in one breath and then in the next breath endorse arming the Al Qaeda side in the Syrian civil war.

And when it comes to military spending, this piece by Ted Galen Carpenter on the Cato site points out Romney's confused stance in favor of increasing military spending with money borrowed from China:

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BR>In his October 3 debate with Barack Obama, Mitt Romney established a fascinating test for determining whether a spending program is worthwhile. Is the program important enough, Romney asked, to borrow money from China to fund it

It is an intriguing and pertinent standard. China already holds more than $1.2 trillion in U.S. Treasury debt, and that amount is growing rapidly as the U.S. federal budget continues to hemorrhage red ink at a rate of $1 trillion a year, with China being a large purchaser of that new debt. It is not merely the overall fiscal recklessness that is troubling, although that should bother all Americans. Equally worrisome is the potential leverage that such profligacy gives to a strategic competitor. And China is a strategic competitor, not an ally or even a "friend" of the United States. No American should want the U.S. government to be in a position where it must defer to Beijing on an important issue merely because it is imprudent to annoy one's banker.

Unfortunately, Romney does not apply his own standard to a crucial part of the federal budget: military spending. That is not a trivial matter, since military spending makes up some 20 percent of federal spending. Indeed, not only does Romney exempt Pentagon programs from the "China borrowing test" that he would apply to other expenditures, he wants to lavish even more money on the Department of Defense.

Another good piece on the blog concerns the totalitarian levels of security the government creates for politicians these days. Here's Thomas DiLorenzo describing the scene in Florida during a Romney stay:

On my Sunday morning 15 mile bike ride I started out by peddling the several blocks up to Rt. A1A where the Marriott is, and saw cops everywhere. When I stopped at the light a large, bullet-proof vest wearing, heavily-armed "cop" (probably a "homeland security" thug) walked toward me and glared at me (and anyone else around). Across the street in the Marriott parking lot was a huge police bus with "INCIDENT COMMAND CENTER" emblazoned on the side. Both entrances to the hotel were littered with police cars and barricades.

After the bike ride and a few chores I walked back up to the beach with my beach bag and afternoon reading. About a half hour after I got there a small pleasure boat wandered into the water about a quarter mile out in front of the Marriott. Two coastguard or homeland security boats with huge engines and manned machine guns mounted on the front raced toward the weekend boaters. After stopping them, and I'm sure scaring the daylights out of them, the boaters were apparently told to get the hell out of there FAST. The boat raced off, followed by both of the coastguard boats at a very high rate of speed. The men manning the machine guns had them aimed directly at the boaters the entire time. As soon as the boat was outside of their "perimeter" the gun boats stopped and turned around.

Give up, boys and girls. Our doom was sealed back when the Republicans rejected Ron Paul. It's bigger government and even bigger spending no matter which of these two characters wins in November.